Wild Wedding Weekend

What a long, exhausting, beautiful, and fun weekend! Jess and Chris finally got married! It was so great to share the day with them and all of our family. But I will say this: I think being the bride's sister is more exhausting than being the bride because I'm way more tired than I was after my wedding! But that's ok. The important thing is that Jess had a fun, stress-free day. So, I'm happy!

The weekend started with the arrival of lots of family on Friday. My house was hotel to a few family members, which was lots of fun. On Saturday, we began the wedding madness with the rehearsal.

We had to keep a good hold on the baby so she wouldn't fall into the beautiful creek!

Planning and rehearsing and such.

After the rehearsal, we had the rehearsal dinner, which I helped to "cater." While I've cooked many meals, cooking for 30 people was a new experience for me. My little kitchen has a hard time with that much food. But my baked beans, jalapeño mac n cheese, and irish cream brownies went over well.

Grandma and family relaxing at the rehearsal dinner.

Hangin' out.

We had a fun girls' night at my house the night before the wedding. But first, we (Mom, Salem, and I) had to practice our special secret song. We hid upstairs so Jess wouldn't hear us.

We had a room full of family helping us figure it out. I'm not sure what Jess was doing at this point...

The bride! The night before the wedding.

We played games and had a lot of fun. Then we went to bed to be well-rested for the big day! We had lots of getting ready to do!

Mom and Jess getting ready.

Trying to leave the house to head up to the wedding... hoping we didn't forget anything!

At the Red Lion Restaurant getting ready.

Me and Jojo. I think she was pretty excited to see her dad and Jess finally get married!

Jess in her wedding dress.

Aww, mom and daughter.

Finally, it was time for the wedding. We took a fun golf cart ride down to the beautiful creekside ceremony.

I think Evie was a little scared, but I thought it was fun.

During the ceremony.

Evie stole the show and made her dad hold her during part of the ceremony. But it was pretty adorable and the ceremony was very nice.

The happy couple. If you know Chris, you know that this was happy for him.

Yay!

It was tough trying to keep the baby happy during the pictures.

Proud parents.

Then it was time for the party. We had a delicious dinner, cake made by my aunt, Ellen, and an awesome dance party with music from my dad's band.

Cake.

Dinner.

Salem and I gave toasts to the bride and groom, and we sang Daddy's Hands with my mom for the Father/Daughter dance. Then we finally got to relax and have fun!

Me and the bride and groom.

First dance.

Me and Matt among the beautiful surroundings.

Friends. Mel and her family have been around for much of my and Jess's lives, so they had to be at the wedding.

Awesome band.

Awesome dance party.

Me and my cousin, Bethany. She was also the awesome photographer.

It was a beautiful and fun wedding!
To see better pictures, you can check out Bethany's site here.

An Almost Normal Weekend... Almost

Last weekend, things finally calmed down a bit. Of course, the short amount of quiet time was packed in between lots and lots of craziness, but it was still nice. Before we could relax a little, we had a few more events on our calendar. Luckily, it was mostly fun stuff.

Before John and Anna left us, we headed up to Fort Collins for a tour of the New Belgium Brewery. I really love that place. Their mentality about work, the environment, and beer is just awesome.

The big brew house.

We got to take a long tour of the place, which was interesting. Matt and I had been before, but it was still fun.

I Like Beer.

They gave us lots of tasters on the tour.

Yay!

Free tasters! In the private tasting room at the end of the tour.

After we said goodbye to John and Anna, we had plans to go to the Rockies game with some friends.

Dave and Matt.

It was a pretty awesome game. The Rockies were down by six in the bottom of the 9th, but they came back to win the game 12-9. It was SO exciting! And the friends we went with are Cardinals (the team we were playing) fans, which made it a little bit more fun.

Baseball.

Unfortunately, the weekend with John and Anna left me very, VERY behind on homework. After a marathon homework session (11 straight hours), I was pretty burnt out. But I had to wake up quickly because we had big plans on Friday night: it was bachelor/bachelorette party time!

My sister, Jess, and her long-time boyfriend, Chris, are finally getting married in a few days. Last weekend, we had to celebrate their dwindling freedom with a couple of parties. The bachelor party involved hanging out and going to a couple of clubs. Matt doesn't take pictures like I do, so we don't have any evidence... which may be better... But I always take pictures, so I can tell you all about the bachelorette party.

We started the evening at a murder mystery dinner theatre! The show was called Icing Bridezilla!, which we thought was pretty appropriate for the occasion. They had a nice cocktail hour in the courtyard where we met many of the wedding party (actors).

Our bride, all dolled up with princess tiara and feather boa.

Salem and the groom.

The whole gang (minus me).

The bridezilla!

Me and Mel.

Drea and Steph, Jess's matron of honor.

After cocktail hour, we headed upstairs to the top of the old Victorian house, where we were all guests at the wedding.

The ceremony.

Unfortunately, after our delicious dinner, the bride was murdered! We spent the rest of the evening deciphering the clues to find the killer.

Audience participation!

I started getting a little bored towards the end...

When we finally figured out who the murderer was, we headed out for a night on the town. I'm not really a bar-hoppin' type of person, but it was fun to be out in downtown Denver.

Looking cool at our first stop.

Dancing. The DJ called Jess's name and everyone congratulated her.

Then we were on to the next place!

Me and some really nice LoDo cops. I like nice, uniformed people.

We didn't last long at our second location before it was time to go to the hotel. Salem, Jess, and I walked back together.

Cool sisters.

The next morning, we had time for a delicious breakfast before leaving the downtown area.

Popular restaurant downtown.

It was a fun night, but I'm not really disappointed that we don't go out downtown more often.

Once we got home on Saturday, my weekend slowed down. Matt and I had talked about going camping, and while we've really missed getting to camp this summer, we've also missed getting to just stay home. So instead, we relaxed. We made a delicious dinner together, went out for gelato, and watched a movie. It was the type of evening that we haven't have in a very long time.

The next morning, we continued our pretense of normalcy by going on a hike! We haven't been hiking together since May, so I was super excited.

Beginning our hike at O'Fallon Park.

We saw a beautiful black fox. He stayed with us along the trail for awhile.

Meadow.

View.

The hike had tons of beautiful wildflowers, which I love. I'm starting to make a new hobby of learning the types of flowers we see on hikes.

Pretty.

It was great to escape from our busy lives and pretend like things were a little more normal. But now we're back in the crazy swing of things. This week has had lots of homework, lots of work, and tons of wedding stuff. Bring on the crazy!